Fortunate Mistress

Fortunate Mistress Synopsis

According to Wikipedia: "e;Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress is a 1724 novel by Daniel Defoe. The full title of the novel is Roxana:

• The Fortunate Mistress Or, a History of the Life and Vast Variety of Fortunes of Mademoiselle de Beleau, Afterwards Called the Countess de Wintselsheim. The novel concerns the story of an unnamed "e
• fallen woman"e
• , the second time Defoe created such a character (the first was a similar female character in Moll Flanders). In Roxana, a woman who takes on various pseudonyms, including "e
• Roxana,"e
• describes her fall from wealth thanks to abandonment by a "e
• fool"e
• of a husband and movement into prostitution upon his abandonment. Roxana moves up and down through the social spectrum several times, by contracting an ersatz marriage to a jeweler, secretly courting a prince, being offered marriage by a Dutch merchant, and is finally able to afford her own freedom by accumulating wealth from these men."e